‘Guardian’ Calls Brooklyn the Hip New Place for Indie Music

There’s really only one acceptable explanation for the Guardian’s breathless article about the vitality of the Brooklyn music scene: The editors filed the story back in 2002, misplaced it, found it yesterday, and published it today with some of the band and venue names changed in the hope that readers wouldn’t know the difference. We don’t begrudge the Guardian for their enthusiasm — hey, we like the Dirty Projectors and Celebration too! — but we’re sort of amazed that anyone in 2007 could still believe that Williamsburg is a super-affordable Utopia for artists, or seem surprised that all the hipsters in the city have moved to Brooklyn instead of Manhattan. (One can only assume that the writer thought all New Yorkers just hung out in the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty prior to Brooklyn becoming cool.) There’s plenty to snicker at in the piece, but our favorite bit is when TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek is outside of his studio in Williamsburg grumbling about the “oversexed MTV fashion-whore shit that is promoted by the music industry.” It’s like the article fell out of a time warp! —Matthew Perpetua

Escape from New York [Guardian]